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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 174–176.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Southey's spelling has not been regularized.
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Your letter this day found me in a remote Herefords part of Herefordshire, the village from
whence one part of my ancestry sprung, where they were some 2 generations back
the great people, where their old mansion house is now untenanted & in
ruins, & where I am visiting a stranger among strangers.th of this month for Hereford to be with
Thomas, & are now at
his Uncles
I am very – very – desirous of seeing Leopold Berchtold.
I have no excuses to offer for silence – at least none worth
offering. riding & walking are idle employments – & when I am at home
you know not how much I have to do. My mind is never vacant – I turn from one
employment to another – & change is to be me
as rest. you know I am now a housekeeper, & as my additional charge have not
yet received any additional resources, my industry is all in requisition. in
this however my Uncle will
assist me when he can, & in the mean time it is well that I can do without
it. I review a great deal – & am surprized to find the months come round so
fast. besides this I have another regular employment which kills two birds with
one stone & which I will one day explain to you, & then the Law you know
– damn the Law. however I have lately found a second reason for reading a Law
book – & shall sit at it hungrily.
At present Grosvenor I hunger & thirst to be in your
Library
I write to you with little comfort out of a most villainous
ink-stand. I have never seen Roscoes linesmuch from him. he is an accomplished man & a good
man, but one whose reputation will not last because it is not deserved. his book
is a weak book.
My Vision
Grosvenor you have an ugly great sheet half filld – I wish it
were smaller or fuller. There is a tide in the feelings of man, which taken at
the flood leads on to letter writing